Lady Reluctant

by Maggie Osborne

  Swallowing hard, she blinked at the sudden tears pricking her eyelids.

  “Blusette?” Cecile placed her glove on Blu’s arm and leaned to peer beneath the brim of Blu’s winter hat. “We’re home,” she said gently.

  “Home? I thought we were to call at Lady Walter’s.”

  “But we did, my dear. Don’t you remember?”

  “I’m sorry, I... yes, of course we did.”

  “No, wait, Please don’t alight just yet. Speak to me a moment.”

  Blu hesitated, then surrendered to the plea in Cecile’s gentle gaze. She leaned against the upholstered carriage seat, watching with dull eyes as Lady Katherine and Aunt Tremble stepped from the carriage and waited for Mr. Apple to open the door.

  “Blusette, I implore you to tell me what is happening. Please.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Patience drew heavily at Cecile’s delicate features. “I’m sorry, Blusette, but you do know.” A gloved fist formed on her lap and she smacked her knee. “I am so weary of always being protected. As if I were too frail to bear the weight of unpleasant news. I am not!”

  “I know, Cecile. It is only—”

  “No, no explanations why I should not be told. Not this time. Not from you, Blusette. We have always been honest with each other. I beg you to be honest now.”

  Blu lowered her head and touched her fingertips to her forehead.

  Cecile drew a breath. “Mama is behaving strangely. She keeps to her closet, she speaks only when necessary. Monsieur is agitated. Mouton stares into space. Edward is constantly distracted. Only Aunt Tremble seems as usual. But she is exasperated by everyone and has retired to her chamber to take physic. Finally, dearest Blusette, there is you.”

  Blu turned her face to the carriage window and looked out at the deserted winter square. The flower boxes were empty now, the bare earth glazed by a hard frost. A coach had recently passed, pressing tracks into the ice on the cobblestones. Her gaze followed the tracks curving away from Grosvenor Square.

  “My dear,” Cecile said, placing her fingers on Blu’s arm. “You are miserable, no one can mistake it. I haven’t heard you laugh since the night of our ball. Please—won’t you tell me why everyone is so unhappy?”

  “It’s my fault,” Bin whispered. “Everyone is angry with me. And rightly so.”

  “That cannot be true. Everyone loves you.”

  She lifted her head and clasped Cecile’s hand so hard that Cecile winced. “Oh Cecile, please believe that I love you. I don’t ever what to hurt you!”

  “My dearest sister,” Cecile said, touching her cheek and smiling. “I know you would not injure me.”

  “God’s teeth!” Cecile’s trust was like a dagger to her heart. Falling back against the upholstery, Blu squeezed her eyes shut. “I have never known anyone like you,” she said finally. “You love without asking anything in return. You forgive any slight. You insist on seeing only the good in people. You have so much reason to complain, yet you never do. You’re a...” she sought the highest praise. “You are a true lady!”

  “I think you give me too much credit.”

  “You deserve the best in life, Cecile. You deserve to have Thomas and children and a lifetime of happiness.”

  “Blusette? Are you weeping? Oh my dear, whatever did I say to—”

  Jumping from the seat, she leaned out the carriage door and gestured Mouton forward. “Lady Cecile is ready to alight.” Deliberately not looking at Blu, Mouton stepped to the carriage door. “Oh Mouton,” she whispered. Her heart twisted.

  “Blusette, please. You have not told me why everyone is so miserable. Please—”

  Pretending not to hear, she lifted her skirts and fled her misery, running up the staircase to her chamber. But her misery followed.

  ~ ~ ~

  “It’s true,” Blu said, her voice scarcely audible. Her hands laced together and she drew a long breath. The floor was icy beneath her bare feet. “I love him.”

  She stood in her night dress in the shadows just inside Lady Katherine’s chamber. In the corridor outside the door the hall clock chimed midnight, echoing the call of the crier passing below in the square.

  Lady Katherine lowered the book she had been reading and leaned back against her pillows. The light from the single candle beside her bed cast shadows beneath her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks, glowed over the gold braids falling across her shoulders. Laying aside her book, she lowered her head and pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingertips.

  “Love,” she repeated in a scornful tone. “You will destroy Cecile.”

  “Cecile will never know.” Rocking back on her bare feet, Blu briefly closed her eyes, then extended her hands and popped her knuckles. “I think it is time you knew the whole truth.”

  Speaking swiftly so Lady Katherine could not protest or interrupt, speaking in a voice that faltered then gathered strength, she remembered aloud the first time she had seen the Duke through Beau Billy’s spyglass. She told how she had inspected him on the wharf then had chosen him to take her virginity as a statement of rejection for England and the mother who had abandoned her.

  Lady Katherine lowered her fingers from her face and met her gaze.

  But Blu did not take up the challenge. She continued speaking, relating the night in the hut with Thomas and how it had ended. Perhaps a hint of a smile wavered at Lady Katherine’s lips; perhaps it was a trick of the flickering candlelight. Next she spoke of the voyage and she told how Thomas had taught her to use a fork, how he had answered her questions about being a lady, how he had rejected her again though she was sick with longing even then.

  Only now did she allow herself to move from the dark doorway. Without glancing toward the bed, she stepped to Lady Katherine’s fireplace and extended her cold hands to the embers dying in the grate.

  “When I left Thomas’s ship, I thought I would never see him again,” she remembered softly. “But... well, you know the rest.”

  A deep sigh lifted and collapsed Lady Katherine’s breast. “I guessed none of this,” she admitted finally, breaking the silence that had opened between them. “Of a sudden a great many puzzles are solved.” She turned her gaze to the fireplace. “Why do you tell me this Blusette?”

  “Because we cannot continue as we have done these past two weeks. With you refusing to speak to me, refusing to look at me. Everyone is distressed and Cecile suspects something is amiss.”

  “I should say she is correct. You have placed her future in jeopardy.”

  Blu stiffened her shoulders and bit her lips. “Please. You may not believe me, but neither Thomas nor I wish to injure Cecile or cause her pain. We have agreed never to be alone together. We are agreed whatever draws us must end. What you witnessed on the terrace will not happen again.” She could not carry truth to its final destination; she could not confess what had occurred in the stables. That magical moment, that ultimate betrayal, was too private to bear sharing.

  “You intend to give him up? It is your intention that Cecile’s wedding shall take place as planned?”

  “I... yes.”

  In the ensuing silence the embers settled heavily in the grate, sending a shower of sparks crackling up the flue. In the corridor, the hall clock struck once. An icy raindrop pelted the windowpane, then another.

  “You have chosen a difficult path.”

  The observation was so starkly different from what Blu had expected that she turned from the fireplace to look at her mother. Lady Katherine returned her gaze and in her weary expression Blu read sorrow and, yes, sympathy.

  “It requires great strength to abandon one you love, Blusette. Do you possess the strength to see it through?”

  Abruptly, she sank to the stool in front of the hearth and stared. “What are we discussing here?” Lady Katherine’s expression suggested another place, another time. “Are you saying it required great strength for you to leave Beau Billy and me?” she inquired in a whisper.

  The rain hi
ssing against the windowpanes seemed overloud in the silence. “We are speaking of you,” Lady Katherine said at length. “I accept what you have told me. You did not surrender to a selfish impulse and throw yourself at His Grace as I believed. If I understand your tale, we are speaking of a love which has grown through time. But I question if you can now turn away from that for which you yearn. Can you abandon a love so recently found? Do you possess that kind of strength, Blusette? Can you be that unselfish? Can you be certain you will not eventually resent Cecile for having what you cannot?”

  Bending forward, Blu covered her face in her hands. “I pray to God that I can do all you say.”

  “I think not,” Lady Katherine said, but her voice was gentle. “You have the same expressive face as your father. Your heart is there for all to read. If it is true as you say that you don’t wish to wound Cecile, how will you conceal your heart when you look at Edward? Cecile is kind and forgiving, but she is not witless. Eventually she will see what I have seen. She will look into your eyes and recognize what glows there. How will you hide your heart, Blusette?”

  “I don’t know.” Despair cracked her voice. “But I shall. I must!”

  Lady Katherine folded her hand on top of the quilt and turned her face toward the rain-streaked window. “Betrayal is a terrible thing,” she observed softly. “Especially when the one betrayed is guiltless. Especially when there is no true remorse in the culprit’s heart. The guilt—and the yearning—are as crippling as a carriage spill. One never escapes it. There is no respite. You will look back and reassess your decision a thousand times, Blusette. You will torment yourself by imagining different choices, different endings. You will relive the betrayal a hundred times and you will know regret that it occurred or perhaps regret that you did not seize your moment when you still could.”

  Blu lifted her head. “Oh my God,” she whispered, staring.

  “A face on the street will make you start forward, hoping it is he. A gesture, a voice, will remind you of him. He will come to you in the sound of another’s laughter and in the gait of another man’s walk. The sunshine will remind you of him because you knew him in sunshine. The rain will torment you because you knew him in rain. The scent of a flower will bring tears to your eyes because he placed that flower in your lap or tucked it in your hair. You will see his smile in the shape of a cloud, hear his call on a summer breeze. He will come to you in dreams, both sleeping and awake.”

  “You know. You understand.”

  Lady Katherine did not look away from the window. “You will experience pain such as you did not imagine could exist. And no one can ease your heartache because no one can know. And one day another man, a man who is not him, will touch you and you must submit and you will know agony. You will betray your heart and your heart will wound you in revenge. You will feel guilt whenever you laugh because you are not deserving of happiness. There is no happiness without him. And he is lost to you. You will endure a slow, sweet death.”

  “I didn’t know,” Blu murmured, staring at her mother. “You said you never loved him... but it wasn’t true, was it? You loved him.”

  “Leave me, Blusette. Of a sudden I am weary.”

  At the door, Blu turned. Her mother’s face remained turned toward the shadows, watching the cold rain slipping like tears down the windowpanes.

  “I forgive you,” Blu whispered. Something hard and tight cracked away from her heart and melted in the heat of union and understanding. “You have suffered enough for sailing away from Morgan’s Mound.”

  Quietly, she slipped from the door and eased it shut behind her.

  ~ ~ ~

  Her own suffering had merely begun. By unspoken consent Lady Katherine, Monsieur, and Mouton joined in a conspiracy for which she blessed them and cursed them. When Thomas called at Grosvenor House, Monsieur invented errands or chores that took Blu to the city and away from the drawing room. At balls, assemblies, levees, and soirees, Lady Katherine spirited Blu away before she could be drawn into more than a polite exchange of greetings with His Grace. Mouton made certain Lady Cecile entertained her betrothed well away from a chance encounter with Blusette by pushing Cecile’s chair into the library or onto the sun porch or wherever Blusette was unlikely to appear.

  As agreed, Thomas held to the vow they had exchanged in the stable. His dinner discourse was impeccably proper; when he assisted Blu into a carriage his touch was brief and carefully impersonal. He no longer requested a dance at balls. He did not partner her at the card tables, he slipped from the room when Aunt Tremble cajoled her to play an air on the pianoforte. He resisted Cecile’s entreaties to spend time with Blu. He claimed business in the city when Cecile suggested a carriage outing for the three of them.

  But there were unavoidable moments when their eyes met and held and a passionate hunger flashed between them like summer lightning. Memory jumped in hearts that looked forth from suffering eyes. Blu remembered his hands on her waist, his fingers sliding between her thighs; she remembered his lips on her breathless mouth, her breasts, the soft bristles of his mustache tickling her heated skin. And she saw her memories reflected in his smoky gaze, in the hard knots rising along his jawline.

  “Excuse me,” she said now, tearing her gaze from him and jumping to her feet. “I have to... I have to...” Her mind raced, seeking an excuse to flee the drawing room before Cecile deciphered the yearning in her expression.

  Aunt Tremble glanced up from the tea tray and scowled. “But you haven’t had your tea, Blusette. And Edward only just arrived. Must you go tearing off every time we try to have a pleasant conversation? Really, Katherine, you must speak to our Blusette. She cannot sit still, she either talks too much or not at all, and lately she’s as winter glum as a starving bird. I can’t say I know what to make of it. Blusette, do sit down and have your tea. Edward, if Katherine won’t persuade her, will you?”

  An awkward silence ensued, ended at last by Cecile, who viewed the company with a puzzled expression. “Aunt is correct. It does seem you run off whenever Edward arrives.” A cajoling smile curved her lips. “Surely you two can bear to be in the same room.”

  “I’ve told you a dozen times, and I’m certain His Grace shall confirm it, the Duke of Dewbury and I do not dislike each other,” Bin said, a trifle irritably. She did not look at Thomas. “I tell you truly, I hold His Grace in the highest esteem.” It hurt. God’s balls but it hurt. “Now you must excuse me. Just this moment I recalled I am overdue at the Duchess of Blightshire’s for tea. I shall be hopelessly tardy.”

  After dropping a curtsy and instructing Monsieur to order up the coach, she rushed from the drawing room and dashed up the staircase to fetch her hat and cloak.

  The Duchess of Blightshire had indeed invited her to tea, but the invitation was for Tuesday, not for today. As she ran up the stairs to her chamber, she had not the dimmest notion where she would go.

  But by the time she flew out the door and stepped into the Paget coach, she knew precisely where she wished to go. She would find Isabelle; she longed for Isabelle’s plump embrace and Isabelle’s earthy laughter. She longed for a link to Morgan’s Mound and the person she had once been.

  As the rules agreed upon stated that Isabelle could visit Grosvenor Square, but Blu could never, never visit Isabelle’s bordello, she knew her action would be frowned upon. Therefore, she jumped into the coach and shouted at Mr. Jamison, the coachman, to be away, before Mouton or Monsieur could join her. Neither would have allowed her to drive to Covent Garden.

  For an instant it appeared Mr. Jamison would refuse.

  “Covent Garden, miss?” he asked incredulously, peering at her through the door in the coach roof. His eye scanned the interior and she imagined his brow arched upward another inch when he noted she lacked an escort.

  “Immediately,” she commanded in her most imperious tone. She sounded so like Lady Katherine that the moment impressed her as uncanny. But the coach door slapped shut, Mr. Jamison’s whip cracked in the brisk air, and the ho
rses stepped smartly forth.

  Once they were safely away from Grosvenor Square, Blu’s shoulders collapsed and she fell back against the seat cushions, covering her eyes with her gloves.

  As the weeks slowly passed, it became increasingly evident that she could not remain at Grosvenor House. The situation had become intolerable and could only worsen. A permanent line of anxiety impressed itself on Lady Katherine’s brow. At any hour Mouton and Monsieur could be found, heads together, engaged in worried discourse. Aunt Tremble had begun fainting again at the slightest provocation. Cecile seemed perpetually bewildered. Blu’s misery pervaded the house like a dark mist cloaking something which could not be concealed forever. Eventually Cecile would pierce the deception and discover the secret it concealed.

  The solution was as obvious as the icy pink in her cheeks. If she was to protect Cecile, she had to leave. But where could she go?

  Biting the fingertips of her gloves, she stared unseeing out the coach window, considering.

  With a shock of recognition and regret, Blu realized she could no longer return to Morgan’s Mound. She could not go home. The knowledge squeezed her heart and raised bitter tears to her eyes. She had changed. She could no longer accept or fit into the crude violence, the harsh existence that was the way of life on Morgan’s Mound. She had become enough of a lady to blush for a life she had once embraced. Her tastes were now too refined for rude manners and rough company. The realization was devastating and the tears brimming on her lashes spilled down her cheeks. She had lost something of herself in England, in Grosvenor Square. She was not who or what she had once been. That person no longer existed except as a ghost drifting through wisps of memory.

  So what was she to do? Remain in London? That path was as fraught with peril as the road to Morgan’s Mound. At present she was feted and applauded, but soon her novelty value would pale. By next season society would tire of her and find her old news. They would create a newer sensation and leave her behind as passé.